Sorry, Zac. You can try justifying the flavor of this all you want, but you're wrong. This card doesn't represent 'knowing everything' at all. It represents unlimited power. It's Omnipotence, not Omniscience.

Knowledge, in Magic, is cards in hand. Knowing everything would be having access to any card in the game. It would, in terms of a game of Magic, be represented as having access to your entire deck at once, via either drawing your entire library, or being able to tutor each turn for exactly the card you need.

No matter how much this may reduce the cost of your spells, it doesn't give you any knowledge (card draw) at all. It's an absolute, undeniable failure as a top-down design.

Sorry, Zac. You can try justifying the flavor of this all you want, but you're wrong. This card doesn't represent 'knowing everything' at all. It represents unlimited power. It's Omnipotence, not Omniscience.

Knowledge, in Magic, is cards in hand. Knowing everything would be having access to any card in the game. It would, in terms of a game of Magic, be represented as having access to your entire deck at once, via either drawing your entire library, or being able to tutor each turn for exactly the card you need.

No matter how much this may reduce the cost of your spells, it doesn't give you any knowledge (card draw) at all. It's an absolute, undeniable failure as a top-down design.

Cool design. But definitely the wrong name.

This.

Also, I predict that someone, somewhere, is going to be very frustrated by this card when his opponent thinks he can just cast anything for absolutely free and start casting Kuldotha Rebirths and Infernal Plunges all willy-nilly (sorry, bad examples, but they were the first 2 that came to mind). Any particular reason why the card doesn't just remove all costs, period?

Definitely a "hit" on the "hit or myth" scale, though. About time you guys started printing more Confluxes and less Baneslayer Angels.

I'm picking up what you're laying down, Zac. This is definately a 'feel' card, and like a painting or a rose, what response it elicits is more important than how 'true' it is. I agree that Omniscience isn't the best name for this card, but if you read this card from bottom up (see the card text first, then the name), the name grabs that feeling of 'not paying mana costs'. To compare it to Future Sight, FS wins hands down on bringing flavour and crunch together; but Omni wins as a general concept, where the crunch and name both support it. Predicting the future is cool, but knowing everything would be even cooler.

It's a pity that names like Omnipotence or Ascendance don't fit the colour of blue, but I'll let it slide if we can see cards with those names in future sets.

"Ah, the age-old conundrum. Defenders of a game are too blind to see it's broken, and critics are too idiotic to see that it isn't." - Brian McCormick

Sorry, Zac. You can try justifying the flavor of this all you want, but you're wrong. This card doesn't represent 'knowing everything' at all. It represents unlimited power. It's Omnipotence, not Omniscience.

Knowledge, in Magic, is cards in hand. Knowing everything would be having access to any card in the game. It would, in terms of a game of Magic, be represented as having access to your entire deck at once, via either drawing your entire library, or being able to tutor each turn for exactly the card you need.

No matter how much this may reduce the cost of your spells, it doesn't give you any knowledge (card draw) at all. It's an absolute, undeniable failure as a top-down design.

Cool design. But definitely the wrong name.

A hundred thousand times this. You can try to justify it all you like. You can claim it's a powerfully resonant card. Maybe it is, to someone. To me it isn't. It's a complete flavor flop. It doesn't feel like Omniscience, it doesn't look like Omniscience. It is the first and only thing I can think about when I see this card.

I think one could make the argument that playing spells without using mana might be tied to Omniscience (as Zac Hill clearly attempts to do in his article), but to me personally, I can't say that this card screams being omniscient.

Although the more I think about it, if you are omniscient (and the card was designed to search for cards in libraries), why would you need to search for the knowledge (cards in your library)? You already know everything. Can Omniscience truly be captured by a Magic card? It's almost as if the card should give you the ability to cast spells without even having the card in the deck or your hand in the first place. Potentially just grabbing it from outside the game or your collection and casting it, or just naming a card, saying you are casting it, and the game "sees" that you cast it even though in reality you never really did.

Also, I predict that someone, somewhere, is going to be very frustrated by this card when his opponent thinks he can just cast anything for absolutely free and start casting Kuldotha Rebirths and Infernal Plunges all willy-nilly (sorry, bad examples, but they were the first 2 that came to mind). Any particular reason why the card doesn't just remove all costs, period?

Probably for cards like Momentous Fall, which require the additional cost to function.

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I like storm crow because I really like crows in real life, as an animal, and the card isn't terribly stupid, but packs a good deal of nostalgia and also a chunck of the game's history. So it's perhaps one of the cards I have most affection to, but not because "lol storm crow is bad hurr hurr durr".

Although I do assume you deliberately refer to them (DCI) as The Grand Imperial Convocation of Evil just for the purposes of making them sound like an ancient and terrible conspiracy.

Now, now.
1994 doesn't quite qualify as "ancient".

56734518 wrote:

Oh, it's a brilliant plan. You see, Bolas was travelling through shadowmoor, causing trouble, when he saw a Wickerbough Elder with its stylin' dead scarecrow hat. Now, Bolas being Bolas took the awesome hat and he put it on his head, but even with all his titanic powers of magic he couldn't make it fit. He grabbed some more scarecrows, but then a little kithkin girl asked if he was trying to build a toupee. "BY ALL THE POWERS IN THE MULTIVERSE!" he roared, "I WILL HAVE A HAT WORTHY OF MY GLORY." and so he went through his Dark Lore of Doom (tm) looking for something he could make into a hat that would look as stylish on him as a scarecrow does on a treefolk. He thought about the Phyrexians, but they were covered in goopy oil that would make his nonexistant hair greasy. He Tried out angels for a while but they didn't sit quite right. Then, he looked under "e" (because in the Elder Draconic alphabet, "e" for Eldrazi is right next to "h" for Hat) in his Dark Lore of Doom and saw depictions of the Eldrazi, and all their forms.
"THIS SHALL BE MY HAT!" he declared, poking a picture of Emrakul, "AND WITH IT I WILL USHER IN A NEW AGE OF DARKNESS -- ER, I MEAN A NEW AGE OF FASHION!"
And so Nicol Bolas masterminded the release of the Eldrazi.

57864098 wrote:

Rhox War Monk just flips pancakes, and if games have told us anything, it's that food = life.

56747598 wrote:

76973988 wrote:

This thread has gotten creepy. XP

Really?
Really?
The last couple days have been roughly every perverse fetish imaginable, but it only got "creepy" when speculation on Mother of Runes's mob affiliation came up?

This card is a match made in heaven with Arcanis. He's not really omnipotent, he's omniscient. The enchantment isn't omniscient at all, it's omnipotent. Together, they make you into a god. Arcanis even helps you draw into lands to play the enchantment or other spells go generate ramp. They even both cost triple blue.

It's a really cool concept, but as a card, all it's going to do is ruin a lot of EDH games.

It might, but as cards in that category go I think this is a fairly benign one. There has long been a trend in WotC's card designs that at 9+ mana a card can basically just win the game. This one is counterable, can be taken out by Enchantment removal and doesn't even do anything on its own. I don't imagine I'd often consider a game won by this card to be "ruined". If nobody at the table can do anything about it that seems like a fairly legitimate win to me.

Look at it this way: it makes spells free. If you have TEN MANA, why do you need free spells?!

(That said, I'm off to build a deck that sticks this under a Hideaway land... )

Sorry, Zac. You can try justifying the flavor of this all you want, but you're wrong. This card doesn't represent 'knowing everything' at all. It represents unlimited power. It's Omnipotence, not Omniscience.

Knowledge, in Magic, is cards in hand. Knowing everything would be having access to any card in the game. It would, in terms of a game of Magic, be represented as having access to your entire deck at once, via either drawing your entire library, or being able to tutor each turn for exactly the card you need.

No matter how much this may reduce the cost of your spells, it doesn't give you any knowledge (card draw) at all. It's an absolute, undeniable failure as a top-down design.

Cool design. But definitely the wrong name.

Yes. Exactly. Exactly why I was sad when I scrolled down. How could they whiff so monumentally? Now the word Omniscience is used and they can't use it again, and it's wrong (you can even hear him reaching in the article for why it makes sense, but it doesn't).

I was brainstorming what Omniscience could be. I alighted on knowing what your opponents are thinking:

Omnscience 7uuu enchantmentYou may look at any opponent's hands or libraries at any time. At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, that opponent declares which spells they will cast that turn. At the beginning of your upkeep, each opponent declares which of their creatures will attack you during their turn.

Enh. THAT's horrible. Also more PREscience than omniscience. Hmm.

But yeah, this card is more omnipotence than omniscience. What would omnipresence look like?

It's a really cool concept, but as a card, all it's going to do is ruin a lot of EDH games.

It might, but as cards in that category go I think this is a fairly benign one. There has long been a trend in WotC's card designs that at 9+ mana a card can basically just win the game. This one is counterable, can be taken out by Enchantment removal and doesn't even do anything on its own. I don't imagine I'd often consider a game won by this card to be "ruined". If nobody at the table can do anything about it that seems like a fairly legitimate win to me.

Look at it this way: it makes spells free. If you have TEN MANA, why do you need free spells?!

(That said, I'm off to build a deck that sticks this under a Hideaway land... )

this...EDH doesn't need these possibly broken/banned cards.If I wanted to play yugioh (which I don't)...

I'm not normally the type to complain about this sort of thing, but I really must chime in that I don't feel this captures the flavour of true omniscience in any way; indeed, the effect doesn't even feel Blue. It looks to me like a classic example of Blue being characterised as the colour that 'does weird stuff', where unprecedented effects are arbitrarily pushed into Blue because it's the 'magic colour' - I thought that was something that Magic had moved past. If this card had been printed in Black as "Omnipotence", as a Johnny I'd be terribly excited about it - however, I identify very strongly with Blue as a colour, and the flavour issues are just too offputting for me to get into it, as-is.

Ironically, I think the reason it got through was because members of R&D also identify strongly with Blue; to the point that they don't actually distinguish between omniscience and omnipotence, conceptually. Zac's explanation here didn't sound to me like he was trying to 'stretch' the definition of omnipotence to suit the card; it sounded more like he simply didn't differentiate between the two, as if omnipotence necessarily follows from omniscience. Nonetheless, power and knowledge represent the core values of two separate colours, and even if the practical end result of those pursuits is the same - much the same way that, practically speaking, all colours defeat opponents in duels - it's still important that we draw the distinctions that the colours are fundamentally preciated upon.

Blue is such a traditionally powerful colour, I don't understand why R&D seems so compelled to introduce effects that don't really have a strong basis in Blue. If you really wanted a powerful Blue enchantment, I would think it would be easy enough to take the things that already make Blue powerful and simply exaggerate them - no?

Zac's explanation here didn't sound to me like he was trying to 'stretch' the definition of omnipotence to suit the card; it sounded more like he simply didn't differentiate between the two, as if omnipotence necessarily follows from omniscience. Nonetheless, power and knowledge represent the core values of two separate colours, and even if the practical end result of those pursuits is the same - much the same way that, practically speaking, all colours defeat opponents in duels - it's still important that we draw the distinctions that the colours are fundamentally preciated upon.

Yup, precisely this...

Blue is such a traditionally powerful colour, I don't understand why R&D seems so compelled to introduce effects that don't really have a strong basis in Blue.

Sorry, Zac. You can try justifying the flavor of this all you want, but you're wrong. This card doesn't represent 'knowing everything' at all. It represents unlimited power. It's Omnipotence, not Omniscience.

Knowledge, in Magic, is cards in hand. Knowing everything would be having access to any card in the game. It would, in terms of a game of Magic, be represented as having access to your entire deck at once, via either drawing your entire library, or being able to tutor each turn for exactly the card you need.

No matter how much this may reduce the cost of your spells, it doesn't give you any knowledge (card draw) at all. It's an absolute, undeniable failure as a top-down design.

Cool design. But definitely the wrong name.

I opened the article, read the card, and then scrolled immediately to the bottom of the page to get to the forum thread to say exactly this.

Who the hell let this happen? How can an entire team not know the difference between omniscience and omnipotence? This is an incredible failure on so many levels, because this ISN'T an arcane bit of knowledge. A lot of people know this tidbit, and given the archaic words that pop up on some of the cards, I'm certain that you have to have SOMEONE there who knows. I'm simply stunned, because this kind of error says to me that you guys aren't paying attention. This is worse than the Urza's Block failure, because this is something simple and obvious that just slipped through. Game balance is tough. Doing a Google search for "omniscience definition" is not.

Everyone who says this is the wrong name isn't thinking about it right. In all magic fantasy, the wizards with more knowledge grow powerful in the same proportion. Remember the piece of flavor text that started "The wizard who reads a thousand books is powerful"? Well what about WIZARDS THAT HAVE READ EVERYTHING, HEARD EVERY ORAL TRADITION. They would know so much that they would have power so great as to be almost limitless. This card encapsulates that rather well.

In all magic fantasy, the wizards with more knowledge grow powerful in the same proportion. Well what about WIZARDS THAT HAVE READ EVERYTHING, HEARD EVERY ORAL TRADITION. They would know so much that they would have power so great as to be almost limitless.

Yes, and they would therefore be able to cast more than the three spells you happen to have left in your hand at the time. The point is that knowledge=cards is a defined thing in M:TG. Sure, somebody with infinite knowledge could just keep casting Ritual effects and things and gain infinite power, but that doesn't mean you can call power knowldege. Knowledge makes it easier to get power, and power makes it easier to get knowledge but fundamentally they're different things.

Sorry, Zac. You can try justifying the flavor of this all you want, but you're wrong. This card doesn't represent 'knowing everything' at all. It represents unlimited power. It's Omnipotence, not Omniscience.

Knowledge, in Magic, is cards in hand. Knowing everything would be having access to any card in the game. It would, in terms of a game of Magic, be represented as having access to your entire deck at once, via either drawing your entire library, or being able to tutor each turn for exactly the card you need.

No matter how much this may reduce the cost of your spells, it doesn't give you any knowledge (card draw) at all. It's an absolute, undeniable failure as a top-down design.

Cool design. But definitely the wrong name.

This.

Also, I predict that someone, somewhere, is going to be very frustrated by this card when his opponent thinks he can just cast anything for absolutely free and start casting Kuldotha Rebirths and Infernal Plunges all willy-nilly (sorry, bad examples, but they were the first 2 that came to mind). Any particular reason why the card doesn't just remove all costs, period?

Definitely a "hit" on the "hit or myth" scale, though. About time you guys started printing more Confluxes and less Baneslayer Angels.

I came to post the same thing, a little worried that I was being pedantic about it. Now I just feel like I'm kicking the guy on the bottom of the pile....

Instead, I'll spend my pedantry points saying that knowledge is somewhere between cards in hand and cards in library. The library represents your repetoire as a spellcaster, which can be interpreted as spells known or -- if you're the bookish, "your mind is like a closet" sort of spellcaster -- an actual library. Your hand represents the spells you can call recall right now. That is, the few spells you can focus on actually casting under duress because you're too busy running from the wurm your lackeys couldn't manage to hold back. (Stupid squished lackeys.)

(Also, you're not going to see a spell that removes all costs because some effects like Sacrifice that depend on additional costs to make sense. Also, it could potentially lead to un-fun arguments when someone points out that Phyrexian Dreadnought ETB ffect is a cost, and someone else has to try explain that it's an effect which is all cost, not an additional cost to cast the card.)

As for whether this really "feels" blue, I'm still on the fence. As "the metamagic" color, blue gets a lot of weird abilities. It fits in with the recent Rooftop Storm (which gets a pass for being a zombie card in zombie colors), but I can't think of anything else that feels particularly blue about it. If you think of the opposite, making spells cost more, you generally think of Nether Void and Mana Leak. There's no corrupt bargaining between resources, so it doesn't feel black. Their mutual enemy in green tends to look down at artificial spellcraft, especially that which doesn't contribute to the perfectly respectable practice of creatures fighting and eating each other. So I guess blue gets it.

I should also add that all the handwringing over name and color philosophy don't really reduce the impact. It's still the kind of card that looks >this< close to being broken and gets the juices flowing.

Who wanna bet in how many year they will say "Good names are a very valuable resource, and we regret spending the good ones in not the right places, like Invisibility or Omniscience"...

BTW, it would be a good black card. 5BBBBB, cast anything for free. Omniscience could have been: "U:draw a card". Or just be a spell(more blue): Draw your library. Until the end of the game, you cant lose by being unable to draw"

I opened the article, read the card, and then scrolled immediately to the bottom of the page to get to the forum thread to say exactly this.

I did the exact same thing. This card is Omnipotence, not Omniscience. And why is it blue? This is so frustrating because a card with the name "Omniscience" should be really cool, and a card that allows you to play everything for free should be really cool, and this card could have just been so much better. It's still exciting and still feels mythic, but the ability is not in the right color and does not match up at all with the name.

There's been a long-standing precedent in Magic (and especially in blue), that the concept of knowledge or brain power has to do with drawing or searching for cards. Sometimes your mind is even so powerful that you can predict the future. That's why "Brainstorming," "Pondering," "Concentrating," and "Preordaining" all draw you cards. That's why having "Recurring Insight" or "Tidings" means you draw cards. That's why when Jace is "ingenious" he draws cards. And, of course, "Tutors" are more knowledgable than you and can therefore provide you with the exact "information" you need... at a cost (e.g. Vampiric Tutor). Knowledge=cards is not a new thing, and yet you inexplicably abandoned this convention and decided that knowledge=play cards for free.

What's even more frustrating is that there are a lot of directions you could have gone with this card that would have made sense. Keep the current ability and call it Omnipotence (and probably move it out of blue). Keep the name Omniscience and make it about drawing or searching for cards. There's even a precedent for power=cards (e.g. Arcanis the Omnipotent, Griselbrand, Promise of Power, etc.), so you could could have called it Omnipotence and made it about drawing/searching for cards. So many directions you could have gone, and you chose one of the few that didn't make sense.

I would like to point out how useless knowing everything is if you can't do anything about it.

If that's true for this card, then this card is perfect. Exactly what you're saying is the fundamental philosophical rammifications of being omniscient, as explored a million times in plays, novels, films, etc.

The guys are right, this is omnipotence. But most people don't care. Most people get omnipotence and omniscience mixed up. In fact, MtG already did it. Anybody remember Arcanis the Omnipotent? Aha, quite different cards. Its funny how they made the two cards backwards. But I digress-- people are used to seeing all knowing and all powerful together. Its the essence of god, and this world has a lot of god-fearing men.

And for good reasons. To counter myself in debate, one argument is if you're all knowing, you're all powerful. If you know everything, then you know how to counter everything as well, so you can seek out the materials to do so. This card takes this step in logic. It doesn't make you omniscient, it gives you the benefit of omniscience.

Time for some real praise. The art is amazing. Jace walks the road of the planeswalker in reality the same as in his mind-- he comes to a crossing, a path unto many others, one to many. The paths are shrouded by fog in a normal mind, each leading to a different world, a different direction in the multiverse, a different destiny to the planeswalker. You must choose one each time. Jace comes to such a crossing, and his mind clears the fog. In front of him, through his enchantment invoked with a surge of mana, he now sees all paths. Wild, skewed, and difficult to follow, they are filled to the brim with infinitely more loops and infinitely more crossroads. But for this brief moment, he has insight into any future he wants to see and be apart of, whether that be to peace of oneself, or that be the most difficult-- the one to becoming all-powerful. But the question remains-- how brief will this moment be?

Because people would rather complain about semantics than what a card actually does....Chill out. There really is no need to get worked up over nothing.As to the card itself, it's spike and EDH fodder, and as a spike myself I want to see this broken.

While I understand what Zac Hill is saying about Mythic's being some kind of "experience" to pull from a pack, I just can't feel that way about this card. I can't get over 10 mana. That's just way, way, way too much. If all it takes is a simple mana leak to ruin all that time and effort, I just don't see the point. And he mentions in the article how you'll be out of cards by turn 10. Like, imagine you're going against some kind of token deck. If you some how haven't lost by turn 10, and you're top decking, you flipping over one big creature isn't going to stop the hoards of pumped tokens. Or what if you just top deck another Island? Turn 11, you draw again, it's just another damn Island. By that point...you should probably be done. Top-Decking yourself for free is alright I guess. But it's not the "Oh god I am playing so many ****ing cards oh god" like the card sounds like at first.

I just don't like this dumb card. And the author so passionately does. It was awkward to read.

It is so silly of us to get upset about something like this. And yet we do. We just want to things to be as close to perfect, or as close to not-screwed-up as possible. I just finished reading the Steve Jobs bio and now am thinking how awesome MTG would be if he had been involved with it. A card like Omniscience would have been fixed because he would have said, "Our players know this is named wrongly, and they will think that sucks, and since this is a mythic that we will be heralding and previewing, it needs to be done right." (he would have sworn a lot more)

(Doing things right, like really cool horror-trope-based worlds not having dragon cards. Cuz that's really stupid. It's so stupid that you can't believe a grown-up, or a series of grown-ups ever allowed it to happen.)

I don't know why we all still complain about stupid decisions (or mistakes, but according Chats, it was a decision) like this any more. But we do. And we will. Cuz we want somebody to stop allowing stupid things to happen. Maybe some day.

It will be fun to see this card in action some day, cuz it is cool. And the art is awesome. Both of which make the name more .